Where Will Tomorrow’s Experienced Hires Get Their Experience?

Ask an employer what they want from a new recruit and experience will usually appear somewhere in the answer. They want somebody who understands the environment, can become productive quickly and knows how to deal with the situations the role is likely to create.

That preference is understandable. Recruitment is expensive, managers are busy and many organisations have little spare capacity for extended training. An experienced candidate appears to offer greater certainty at a time when every appointment must justify its cost.

There is, however, a question beneath that preference: where will tomorrow’s experienced candidates get their experience if fewer employers are prepared to hire them before they have it?

Recent apprenticeship figures bring the issue into focus. Department for Education data show that apprenticeship starts in England increased by 8.7% between August 2025 and April 2026, reaching 308,770. Within that total, only 160 were foundation apprenticeships, the new entry-level route designed to combine paid work with structured training for younger people. The scheme is new and the figures are provisional, so it would be premature to declare it a failure. Even so, 160 starts is strikingly small beside the government’s ambition of up to 30,000 during this parliament.

The pressure is visible elsewhere. Indeed reported in August that graduate job postings were around 7% lower than a year earlier and at their lowest level for that point in the year since 2020. For people trying to establish themselves in work, the first step is becoming harder to find.

The Experience Paradox

Employers often describe a shortage of suitable candidates while early-career professionals describe a shortage of genuine entry points. Both experiences can be true.

A hiring manager may receive a large number of applications and still find few people who appear ready to perform the role. A young person may submit application after application and discover that supposedly junior positions require previous experience in the same kind of work. The employer sees a readiness problem. The candidate sees a locked door.

Experience cannot be developed in advance of every opportunity. At some point, someone has to be trusted with a first client, a first project, a first difficult conversation or a first meaningful responsibility. Education and training can prepare people for those moments, but preparation only goes so far. Much of what employers value is learned through participation in real work.

This creates a collective problem. One employer can reasonably decide that it needs somebody who can contribute immediately. If most employers make the same decision, fewer people receive the opportunities required to become the experienced candidates everyone later wants to hire.

No single employer is responsible for solving youth unemployment or repairing the apprenticeship system. Organisations still have to make commercially sensible appointments. Yet employers collectively shape the talent market from which they recruit. A business that develops inexperienced people contributes to that market, even when some of those people eventually continue their careers elsewhere.

What Really Needs to Be Present on Day One?

Job requirements tend to grow over time. A previous employee leaves, their responsibilities are collected into a job description and the employer adds a few more capabilities that might prove useful. The resulting vacancy asks for someone who has already done almost everything the role contains.

A more disciplined approach would separate what must be present at the beginning from what can be learned with reasonable support. Some requirements genuinely are non-negotiable. A role may demand a professional qualification, safety-critical knowledge or technical competence that cannot be acquired after arrival. Other requirements reflect familiarity rather than necessity. Experience of a particular system, sector or internal process may shorten the learning curve without determining whether someone can eventually succeed.

Employers can also look more carefully at the evidence available from people who have not yet built a conventional employment history. Part-time work may demonstrate reliability and customer judgement. Volunteering may show responsibility and collaboration. A personal project may provide evidence of curiosity, persistence and practical skill. Education may reveal how someone learns, solves problems and responds to feedback.

None of these automatically makes a person suitable. They do provide a better basis for judgement than treating the absence of a previous job title as the absence of potential.

A genuine entry-level role also needs to be designed as one. Hiring someone with limited experience and then giving them the workload, ambiguity and expectations of an established employee creates frustration for everyone. The role needs clear early responsibilities, access to someone who can answer questions, regular feedback and a deliberate progression towards greater independence.

That investment consumes time, which is one reason smaller employers may hesitate. The cost should be compared with the repeated cost of searching for scarce experience, leaving work uncovered or appointing someone whose impressive history does not translate into success in a new context.

Building the People You Hope to Hire

Employers considering an entry-level appointment can begin with the work rather than the ideal candidate. Which activities could someone learn within three months? Where could they contribute while developing? Who would support them? What evidence would show that they have the capacity to grow?

These questions often reveal that a role can be structured differently. A broad vacancy may become a focused starting role with a clear development path. An employer may decide that an apprenticeship is appropriate, or that a paid placement, trainee position or supported junior appointment offers a better route. In some cases, the honest conclusion will be that the organisation currently lacks the capacity to provide a good early-career experience. Recognising that constraint is better than advertising an entry-level role that quietly demands an experienced person.

There is also a longer-term benefit. People who develop inside an organisation learn its customers, expectations and ways of working. They bring fewer assumptions about how the job was performed elsewhere and may contribute perspectives that a more conventional hiring process would miss. Some will leave after gaining experience, as employees at every level do. Others will grow into responsibilities that would have been difficult or expensive to recruit externally.

The entry-level employment problem is larger than any individual business, and government schemes will have an important part to play. Employers still control many of the moments that turn potential into experience.

Every experienced person was once trusted with work they had never done before. The future talent pipeline depends on somebody continuing to offer that first serious chance.